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Forty years ago, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Charter was signed. Despite its initial successes, South Asia today is politically and strategically fractured, economically least integrated and stuck when it comes to connectivity and diplomacy. With widening internal divisions and growing external demands, how should we look back to the four decades of SAARC and its future?  Paradigm in peril: “After experiencing twice in their own lifetimes” the tragedies of the two World Wars, that generation of thinkers and leaders came together to create the United Nations to lead the world in transforming human behavior for “saving succeeding generations from the scourge of war” and other threats. After the deaths, devastation, and despair, the UN, standing on its three pillars, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), and the Human Rights Council (initially named Commission), was to be the global repository of a new hope of collective human security, prosperity and dignity. With the UN at the core, the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and the ill-fated International Trade Organization (ITO), GATT—now the World Trade Organization (WTO)—were to assist in managing global financial, monetary and trading systems. Aimed at intellectually guiding this global transformation, a new academic discipline, International Affairs, Studies or Relations (IR), bringing together knowledge of history, geography, politics, economics, law, diplomacy and national security etc, also started in Western universities, which has now spread to all parts of the world.  In both these new developments, there was an assumption that the inadequacies in understanding, codifying and guiding human relations individually, but more importantly relations among the highest and most powerful of the human institutions, the nation-states, were primarily responsible for the death and devastation. Now, of course, technology has fundamentally altered the understanding and application of sovereignty, power and interest, further amplifying the need for some form of convergence between national sovereignty and global governance with transformative IR and effective UN. Sadly, the Global Paradigm was in Peril for a long time. With the crisis in IR and post-Cold-War unilateralism the UN is totally marginalized in global affairs. Regionalism, the next best hope: With the UN unable to come out of the Cold-War chasm, but regional cooperation in post-War Europe doing much better, some scholars and policy makers thought, perhaps, that cooperation for peace-security, prosperity and human dignity among countries within the same geographic region, with similar culture, stages of development, threat perceptions and security needs would have better prospects. Regionalism thus emerged as the next best hope in IR, a better approach to resolve disputes, avoid wars and promote peace and security, development, and human rights. With European integration, it was assumed that regional organizations, their leaders and officials could better catalyze national interest harmonization, protecting and promoting individual national interests within the collective regional good. This in turn could act as the building block for future global transformation. Establishment of SAARC: Aware of the power of the idea of regionalism and their region’s common problems of poverty and political violence, like in other parts of the world, seven heads of state and government of South Asia signed the Charter of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in Dhaka, Bangladesh on 8th December 1985. “Promoting peace, stability, amity and progress in South Asia” for the welfare of the peoples of the region was the main goal.  Right at the start, South Asian leaders identified two main areas for regional cooperation: Collective prosperity and regional security. With Afghanistan as the eighth member in 2007, the relevance of SAARC  in addressing the twin tragedies increased significantly.  Early successes: From a modest start areas of cooperation multiplied, encompassing poverty alleviation to trade and finance, culture to environment, social development to security, science and technology to tourism. Eight agreements, including the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA), six conventions including on Suppression of Terrorism and its additional protocol were signed. The Food Bank and Development Fund was meant to promote greater regional integration. SAARC Seed Bank, Multilateral Arrangement on Recognition of Conformity Assessment, Rapid Response to Natural Disaster and Implementation of Regional Standards were also signed. The Social Charter and Charter of Democracy were steps toward common political and social order. The South Asian University could still spur greater intellectual interaction and innovation for greater regional consciousness, identity and cooperation. Sadly, performance hugely lags compared to potential.  Intellectual traffic jam: Three decades after its establishment, Nepal was hosting the 18th SAARC Summit from 23-27 Nov 2014. As the host, the political leadership of the organization came to Nepal. For the second time, the secretariat was also headed by a Nepali and the third time the summit was being held in Kathmandu, where the secretariat is located. All major global and regional actors (the US, China, Russia, Japan, Myanmar, Iran and South Korea) as observers of SAARC, reflected the pivotal position of South Asia in the post-Cold War world. With national leadership of vision and strong SG, this summit could have been a transformative moment for SAARC.  As a member of the Summit Preparatory Committee, at the first meeting, I began my remarks by quoting a former SG—“SAARC has hardly progressed beyond signs and symbols”—and reminding the participants of the widespread criticism of SAARC for being ineffective. With Nepal assuming multiple leadership roles, I asked, “what kind of agenda should we propose, business as usual, incremental reforms or transformative?”  Initially there was an all-round support for a transformative agenda. But from the second meeting the “intellectual traffic jam, political timidity and bureaucratic rigidity” started clogging the highway responsible for making SAARC unable to move forward. After prolonged discussion, ‘Deeper Integration (Better Connectivity) for Peace and Prosperity’ was agreed as the summit theme. But support for deeper integration for peace and prosperity started diminishing and eventually the summit ended up being what SAARC summits have always been, rich in fanfare and declaratory rhetoric but little progress in addressing the real problems of the people of the region or a more unified position on external demands. “Neighborhood first or last?” dilemma and “beggar thy neighbor” policies keep South Asia divided and SAARC in “coma” today.  Essentials remedies: This takes me back to the third SAARC Summit in 1987, the first in Nepal. In preparation for it, the Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies (CNAS) of the Tribhuvan University (TU), with which I was then associated, organized a seminar titled ‘SAARC: Retrospect and Prospect’. I started my paper “Nepal in SAARC, a Long-Term Perspective” with a question: What kind of regional cooperation are we talking about without Trade? Trade became one of the areas of cooperation later.  The next issue I raised was the provision of the charter excluding bilateral and contentious (political and security) issues. The role of the secretariat only as an administrative unit and the level of the secretary-general (SG), a mid-level career official, was the third issue I identified for discussion. Finally, the overly state-centric nature of the organization was, in my view, problematic. With this diagnosis, I proposed three remedies: 1. Strengthening the Secretariat and upgrading the level of the SG, enabling and empowering him/her to more effectively implement the decisions of the inter-governmental bodies and promote regionalism by harmonizing national interests of individual member-states within the larger regional good 2. Greater role for civil society to take up issues that may seem politically contentious for the inter-governmental process to take up immediately but too important to be left out completely 3. A confidence building process by establishing a Council for Dispute Settlement composed of elder statesmen and intellectuals to discuss issues excluded from the inter-governmental process until the charter can be reviewed and amended to strengthen SAARC as a mature institution able to discuss more substantive bilateral political and security issues, which are the main impediments to real regional cooperation My conclusions then were, without addressing these issues, SAARC will be busy only in marginal issues and diplomatic fanfare but unable to really move regional cooperation forward in any significant way. Since then, I have moved from academia to public service, diplomacy to conflict resolution and peacemaking. In my academic-professional-diplomatic roles, I have spoken and written on the need to ‘Transform SAARC to Prepare South Asia for a New Age’, with emphasis on the issues identified in that short paper. Almost three decades later, the 18th summit came and went. Not just the 19th summit remains in limbo, but SAARC and South Asia continue at the same crossroads of time and space, history and geography, only in many ways moving backward in regional cooperation. The only difference is, with the new Asian Century, China in the north and India at its center, the Indo-Pacific, South Asia  and the Central Himalayas have emerged as one of the global political, economic and strategic epicenters, significantly increasing opportunities and risks for the region.  As a student, teacher and practitioner, I have advocated rethinking IR and regional cooperation for long. Today, I am both happy and sad that the discourse on SAARC, its marginalization or BIMSTEC and its revitalization, revolve around the same issues I have raised for four decades.  The author deals extensively with these issues in his new book “SAARC to BIMSTEC:Breakdown or Breakthrough in Regional Cooperation in South Asia”, being published by a leading Indian publisher in early 2026